Crappiest gear Hall of Fame:

  • Thread starter Thread starter chessrock
  • Start date Start date
MISTERQCUE said:
M.V.G. Award (Most Vile Garbage)- Any Behringer Mixer.

Best Door-Stop Award- Alesis 3630

Noise Pollution Award- Any Zoom RFX DSP!

Most Useless Piece of Equipment- Sonic Maximizers!

The "Oh, No Nooo" Award- To the Alesis NaNOverb & comp!

Worst Shop(till you drop-dead)Award- Radio Whack!
Bullseye Q! Just say Na-NO.
 
While we're on the subject of boxes, I should throw in the "guitar" I built years ago as a kid...


Yeah, I built one of those too! Only mine didn't have electronics. It had a cardboard body and a piece of 2x for the neck.
I used to be sooo damned good at air guitar........Hmmm, Maybe I should pick it up again.
 
jitteringjim said:
Just for that, I'm not sending the free software updates for the new all digital, midi controllable, tube saturated coffee maker line. :D

Careful! I'm going to have to nominate that coffee maker if you keep this up, buddy. The damn coffee is terrible! Tastes like f***'in vaccum tubes! :D :D
 
My personal Hall of Shame (limnited top products I have actually owned and tried to use):

In descending order:


#6) The EMU B-3 module: I don't care what anyone says. It doesn't sound like a B-3 to me.

#5) John Oram Stereo Mic Preamp - Sweetwater was hyping the Oram line hard at the time. (They were exclusive USA distributors. Now ask them, and they say Or-who?) I got mine used, but by the time i got it you could barely turn the pots without a pair of pliars, all the pots and switches were noisy as hell, it sounded extremely bland, you couldn't read any of the silkscreening, and the build quality in general was so flimsy the chassis practically flexed when you breathed on it.

#4) Tie: AKG C1000 and AKG C3000 mics - if I wanted to buy something that sounded like shit I could have gone to the manure store.

#3) The Oktava 219: Worst mic I've ever tried. Makes the C3000 sound like a U87. Maybe I just got a bad one, but I wouldn't go near one again without a crucifix and garlic.

#2) the 3630. No need to elaborate. I bought it because I thought all the blinking lights looked cool. Should have just bought a strobe light.

and the grand prize winner:

#1) the Alesis X2 mixer! (It was an 8 buss mixer with mute automation that "looked like" a $25,000 mixer for about $8000.) Only about 500 ever made - so I'm sure most of you never saw one. Good thing - the sight of mic preamps sponataneously blowing up is not pretty. "Luckily" it was modular, so i could unscrew the individual channel strips and send them back for an exchange while still using the rest of the board. It got to the point where UPS would show up at my door every morning without me even asking. ("Anything going to Alesis today, buddy?")

Eventually Alesis told me that they were running out of modules. I sold the board as fast as I could as soon as I heard. I would still feel guilty except that the buyer was some sort of Russian-mafia hustler type who was so sleazy I felt like washing my hands just from talking to him on the phone. He drove up from NYC, and I drove down from Boston and we met in New London, Connecticut to make the deal. Closest I've ever felt like I was a crack dealer.
 
chessrock said:


Careful! I'm going to have to nominate that coffee maker if you keep this up, buddy. The damn coffee is terrible! Tastes like f***'in vaccum tubes! :D :D

How the HELL do you know what vaccum tubes taste like?
 
akg k55
worst audio reproduction devices i've ever heard.

I'd rather record a baby screetching with a radio shack mic, through a behringer mixer and an alesis compressor, with all the gain and compression turned way up, and then blasted at full volume out of 3x9' speaker in my old plymouth station wagon that is basically ground out like flour, about an inch away from my eardrum..

pfft, they're cheap for a reason.
 
Some pretty good suggestions so far, although I don't agree with the 3630. Not sure what you guys do with them, but I have compressed some great sounding acoustic guitars and bass guitars with them and still keep one around because it works on those two things so damn well! Take THAT Mr.NoIQ!!! :D

But the worst of the worst has to be..........................







































The Rodes NT-1

Now that is a mic that should never be used for ANYTHING!

Peace.

Ed
 
I have listened to the AKG K55 heaphones while running the signal through a Behringer mixer, Nanoverb, and Nanocompressor.
AND then lived to tell the tale!

My vote goes to the Bellari MP105 "hum injector" toob mic pre.
(had to give away to protect my sanity)

Chris

P.S. Some of the presets on the Nanoverb are usable and
the Nanocompressor can be used as a lo-fi compression
effect. The Behringer's best use is as a headphone amp.
 
My old, and I do mean old Radio Shack mixer.

While on my quest to make quieter recordings, I first thought the pod was the noisiest link, turns out I was wrong.

Taking that mixer out of the loop bought me at least 5db better signal to noise. At least!!!

"Radio Shack, the hiss goes in before he name goes on."

-Ben Franklin-
 
ahaha, yea my friend has a little radio shack mixer, cost him 50 bucks canadian or something like that. the crossfader is harder to move than a 2x4 through honey.

its only redeeming feature is the big aphex twin sticker he put overtop of it.
 
sonusman said:
The Rodes NT-1

Now that is a mic that should never be used for ANYTHING!

Oh, come on! You're going to have us believe that the NT1 is the worst mic that you've ever heard?!! I have one, and I have an SM58. (typical of most home reccers, I suppose, I don't own any $1000 mics...) Nine times out of ten, my NT1 beats the crap out my SM58 - and I still believe the SM58 is a decent mic for many things.

Just another example of all the un-justified gear-bashing rhetoric on this board, which IMO, is the ONLY thing here not to like.

Chris

.... now if anyone can give me a use for my AKG D80 mic, THEN I'd be happy....
 
OH, Ive owned lots of crap

Some of these are are really old, and I dont remember the model numbers
  1. Ampeg powered mixer, with tank reverb...Tried to sing all on its own(and was more in key than the lead singer). Wound up tossing into trash can on the back porch of skippys mistake in arlington
  2. Siel DK70. If you have ever tried to get a decent sound out of one of these abortions, you'll understand. If not, it cant be described. I traded it for a ludwig blue clear acrylic drrum set.
  3. Simons SPM :2 mixers. Damn, I hate that thing. I still own it, anybody want one? It had presets, but to save them you had to hit two buttons exactly at once, and if you screwed up, you lost your settings. Default had some kind of lfo sweep on the midrange. It sucked
  4. Vox Jaguar. I wish I still had this, for doors songs. Anything else it sounds like ass.
  5. Yamaha DX7....Only good at sounding like a Yamaha DX7. I hated it. traded it for ensoniq mirage, and felt like I was ripping the guy off
  6. Ensoniq Mirage. Fun to make noises with, but not much good for actual music.
  7. Korg DS8. I got paid to program one of these damn things once....IT sucked
  8. The little korg battery powered drum machines. You old timers know what I'm talking about.
  9. Korg P3 Piano module. Technology just wasnt there yet. I still have one.
  10. The whole series of Akai rack mount midi effects...You know, the sequence arpegiator, the midi delay(I still have one).
  11. The original akai sampler, the one with the quick disk drive that was a seperate unit...that one
  12. The Ross 4X4 four track. My first 4 track.
  13. hosa cables
  14. Guitar Center
  15. Anthing that says Rotory Speaker Simulator on it (except Motion Sound)
  16. The Radio Shack Moog.....Bob must have been so ashamed.
  17. Solid State Hammonds.
  18. MOTU MIDI Time Piece II
  19. Fender California Gtr Cables
    [/list=1]
 
Mxl 2001 , I once asked Brent Kaycey what It was designed for and Even he couldnt give an answer. Pretty scary knowing that he designed the thing.:eek:
 
1) Boston guitar-strings
2) Behringer Virtualizer
3) Electro-Voice floor-monitors (does the word 'screamy' ring a bell?)
4) Marshall JCM900 head (what happened to the Legacy of JCM800?)
5) Marshall Valvestate 8040 and 8080 combo's
 
The Ross 4X4 four track. My first 4 track

Man, I though I was the only one who ever had one of those. My first also.

Peavey mixers. Someone said "The hiss goes in before the name goes on" about RS mixers. I though they were talking about Peavey.

The original Midiverb. You could actually hear the electrons in the box moving about on tape.

Any RatShack mic besides the PZM.
 
Does anyone remember Dokorder

Had a Dokorder reel to reel, OK this was absolutely the worst piece of crap.

Would stop when it wanted to sounded like the heads were worn out when it was brand new, heads would have to be cleaned every three minutes.

OK, this was the absolute worst piece of gear I have, or will ever have, at least I hope so!!

GT
 
radio shack cassettes.

most new guitars you pick up at a guitar center, or some place like that.
 
darrin_h2000 said:
Mxl 2001 , I once asked Brent Kaycey what It was designed for and Even he couldnt give an answer. Pretty scary knowing that he designed the thing.:eek:

im pretty sure Brent didnt design that one but i could be wrong.....i thought that one was more or less an "off the rack" model, but could be wrong again....
 
The mxl 2001 is kinda' iffy. Off the shelf, it could very well deserve a spot in the crappy gear hall of fame.

But with one inexpensive and easy mod, it could very well belong in the best bang/buck hall, so the 2001 is borderline.
 
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